A Fortuitous Companionship
by Valerianus
Summary: The year is 4E 176. Servius Vulso, an ex-legionary and veteran of the Great War, finds that although he survived the war, the life he once knew lay in ruins along with the rest of Cyrodiil. Leaving his home country behind, he journeys to High Rock to build a new life for himself, but along the way, fortuitous circumstances present him with unexpected company. [OMCxOFC, OC-centric]


**While playing Skyrim, I really noticed just how much the game sacrifices realism for the sake of smooth gameplay, and so many Skyrim stories on this site ignore these massive discrepancies. For example, the rigid adherence to the game's concept of "races" (which are purely a gameplay mechanic, and in real life, are little more than vague and highly flexible social constructs), ignoring differences in culture like language and customs, and adhering to the game's ridiculously tiny spatial scale (one being able to cross the entire country in all of two in-game days, major cities containing fewer than a hundred inhabitants, etc.) are just some of the things that are simply unrealistic and usually manage to bother me when I read about them. So I usually try to account for these realisms when drifting off into lala-land and imaging various story scenarios in Skyrim. **

**Furthermore, the games give us a wealth of background information and lore that provide crucial context for the events that we get to play through, but the vast majority of stories, it seems, completely ignore these details and instead focus their plots solely on events that occur in games. This is fine, but I get bored of them quickly, and I often find that the in-universe history that the games provide us with is often much more interesting and suitable for a story than the actual events of the games themselves. **

**With these points in mind, a wonderful idea for a story occurred to me whereby an ex-legionary and veteran of the Great War finds that his life in Cyrodiil has been destroyed by the war and abandons his homeland to start a new life for himself in the relatively untouched imperial province of High Rock. Along the way, his journey takes him through a region known simply as the Reach (of which the hold in the game, Skyrim is only about one half, the other formally belongint to High Rock) and here, fortuitous circumstances (Hence the lame title. I'm awful with titles!) thrust upon him a native woman of the Reach as a companion (and here I do away with the game's rather silly concept of "race"). The only problem is, our legionary protagonist has never left his home country before, and his accidental companion has never left the Reach, and as such they're unable to understand each other's languages. (Yay, realism!) Many shenanigans ensue, and I get a wonderful opportunity to play around with culture and especially languages (because I'm a nerd that way) that the games sort of vaguely imply, but never even attempt to implement. I hope this is a better summary than what this site let me put down for the story listing page.**

**As you no doubt have guessed, this story has absolutely nothing to do with the events in Skyrim. Instead, I drew upon the background lore that's given in the game to provide the setting for this story, taking place just after the Great War between the Empire and the Aldmeri Dominion, some twenty-five years prior to the events of the game Skyrim. This story represents an attempt to add more realism to the Elder Scrolls world than what the games are capable of delivering, especially in regards to the different people and cultures present in Tamriel. It also represents what I find to be a fun little linguistic exercise when it comes to dialogue (again, I'm a nerd :D).**

**Time for me to shut up now and get on with the story!**

**DISCLAIMER: Skyrim and the Elder Scrolls franchise belong to Bethesda, I don't gain or profit from this, I own only original characters, blah blah blah, you get the idea.**

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><p><strong>Sun's Height, 4E 176<br>The Reach**

The heavy footfalls of his boots as he trudged along the dirt road were one of only a few sounds that Servius Vulso could discern in this otherwise silent country. The jagged, misty spires of the Druadach Mountains loomed all around him, reaching far into the sky, while rocky bluffs and craggy embankments walled him in pressed in around him, forming small valleys. The vegetation was sparse and consisted mostly of grasses and small shrubs. There was the occasional patch of forest, but these were infrequent and irregular as the land was far too uneven and rocky to permit the types of sprawling forests that blanketed the base of the Jerall Mountains, for instance. Despite being the middle of summer, the air was unseasonably chilly, enough that Servius needed to cover up to keep warm. Currently, the overcast skies were covered in a thick, rolling canopy of light grey cloud, and the air held an oppressively muggy quality to it. Still, it didn't look like rain was around the corner, so that was a small plus as far as he was concerned.

Shrugging and rolling his shoulders, Servius adjusted the heavy weight of his pack as he marched on. He did not care for this country at all. There was entirely too much brown and grey and not enough green for his liking, and the rocky landscape could quickly become downright labyrinthine at times. He constantly had to be on his guard for brigands and highwaymen, as the twisted landscape afforded a wealth of opportunities for individuals of such unsavoury proclivities to ambush unsuspecting and unwary travellers. He considered it a small miracle that he had not already been beset by such outlaws in the last couple of days that he had been travelling in the Reach. Fortunately, if his map was correct, he would soon be coming to a river – the Karth, he believed it was called – where the terrain would open up some more and it would be easier to navigate. It was about one more day's travel until he reached it, but until then, he would have to keep looking over his shoulder every ten feet like a paranoid fugitive.

After another dull, uneventful hour of marching, Servius noticed the terrain start to even out and become more regular. The stiflingly close, maze-like valleys and cliff walls gradually gave way to gentler slopes, and trees started appearing more frequently and in greater numbers. Already, Servius's mood started to lift with the change in surroundings. As he walked, he was soon able to make out the sound of trickling water – for the first time in over a week – and eventually, a small river came into sight, bending into view amidst some gentle hills off in the distance to his left before curving out of sight again.

It was impossible to check the precise time of day with the ceiling of cloud obscuring the sun, but Servius was sure it was around midday or so, and he was making excellent time so far on this leg of his journey, so he decided to allow himself a break. Leaving the main road, he started to make his way towards the river he saw. With the relatively open countryside and the road being only a couple of stone throws away from the river, Servius wasn't concerned about losing his way back. He had an excellent sense of direction anyhow. Besides, the river provided an opportunity to refill his water skins, which were nearly depleted.

As he reached the little river, Servius noted that upstream was a small lake fed by a small waterfall that cascaded down a short cliff. A few rocks surrounding the lake provided convenient makeshift seating and the scattered trees and abundant bushes and shrubs provided for pleasant surroundings. Ambling over to the little rock, Servius extricated himself from his pack and dropped it by the base of a large rock, sighing in pleasure as he was freed from the large weight and rolling his shoulders to alleviate the dull ache that had slowly begun to build up in his shoulders and upper back.

He didn't dare remove his weapons or armour, however. He was deeply suspicious of his apparent good fortune in avoiding ambushes by bandits, and he didn't want to be lulled into a false sense of security; now would be the perfect time for an ambush to occur, while he was resting and preoccupied with eating and drinking. His _spatha_, the signature longsword of the Imperial Legions, remained in its sheath on his belt, next to a full quiver of arrows as he rummaged around in his pack. His bow remained close at hand as he withdrew several water skins. Multiple daggers were kept in place in his boots, on his belt, and hidden in other places, and the _lorica squamata _that he wore, the legionaries' version of scaled armour, was not removed as he walked over to the small lake to refill the skins.

As he went about his task, Servius couldn't help but notice his reflection. Light brown eyes with a faint, golden warmth to them stared back at him from their sockets in a face with a swarthy skin tone and topped with short, dark brown hair. He had a broad chin, mildly thin cheeks that made his cheekbones stand out more, and a tall, aquiline nose that was distinctly Cyrodiilic in nature. His brow was low-set, though not particularly heavy, and his eyes were set deep in his face. He supposed he was rather decent-looking, but nothing exceptional. The most distinguishing feature he saw in his reflection was the thick scar that ran halfway across his left cheek starting from the corner of his mouth, almost resembling a permanent, exaggeratedly lopsided grin. He had obtained that particular disfigurement during the Great War when he had been just a _bit_ too slow in dodging the blade of an Aldmeri Dominion foot soldier, who had been of a mind to detach his head from his shoulders at the time.

The high elf had succeeded only in widening his mouth instead, so Servius supposed he should be thankful, but he really didn't feel like he had much to be thankful for. For four and a half years he had fought the Dominion in the Great War, watched as the murderous elves pillaged and burned their way across Cyrodiil, slaughtering its citizens as they went. For four and a half years, he met them in battle in what seemed like a hopeless war. One by one, he watched as the war claimed the lives of his friends and fellow legionaries. About a year into the war, he received the heart-stopping news that his wife and newborn son had been murdered by the elves when they captured the city of Anvil. The crippling grief that that letter brought him soon turned to overwhelming rage, and his reason for fighting shifted from patriotic duty in defence of his homeland and morphed into a burning desire to kill as many of enemy as he could. By the end of the war, his rage gave out and was replaced with exhaustion, and he looked forward to reuniting with his family, only to find that they too had been murdered by the Dominion, in the sacking of the Imperial City, where they had escaped and fled to in the face of the Dominion's rampaging armies.

After the war, he was discharged from the Empire's military following the completion of his term, with a discharge bonus only a third of what it would have been before the war. Servius found himself without a wife, without a son, without a mother and father, without his sister, and without a home to return to or any belongings other than the clothes on his back and his equipment from the legions. With his life in Cyrodiil completely destroyed, he sunk his earnings into gold and precious jewels and other small items of value that could be carried, and set off for High Rock. He had relatives in the Bretonic city of Evermore, and he could build a new life for himself there, far away from the broken, war-torn country of his birth.

Having completed his task of refilling his water skins, Servius, now in a despondent mood from the careless wandering of his mind back to memories of the War, returned to his pack and replaced the skins, save for one. After a bit of rummaging, he brought out a couple wrapped bundles of preserved food.

Hopping up to sit on the rock he had dropped his pack by, he unwrapped the bundles to reveal a hunk of dried bread and strips of cured meat. He broke off a piece of bread and removed a few strips of meat from the other bundle and set those aside before rewrapping the bundles and replacing them back inside his pack. He broke a small piece off his loaf and popped it in his mouth, loudly chewing the crunchy bread as crumbs cascaded down the front of his armour. He quickly chased it down with a gulp from his newly-filled water skin. Servius didn't particularly care for the bread; it was hard and tasteless, and always dried out his mouth considerably, but it was one of the few foods that didn't spoil and was suited for travel. The meat, smoked venison that he had procured at the last roadside inn he stayed at, was much more enjoyable.

As he ate, his thoughts turned towards Evermore, and his relatives there. His mother's younger brother had moved when Servius was only a child, so he barely knew his uncle as visits were very infrequent, but his mother exchanged letters with his uncle regularly, so he had some idea about the kind of life his uncle lived. From what his mother told him, his uncle owned a small but profitable trading business that ran goods and supplies between the major cities and the smaller, more isolated towns and villages in and around High Rock's section of the Reach. He had settled down and married a local Breton girl, and they started a family of their own, with cousins he had never met before.

After Servius was discharged from the legions, he had exchanged a few letters of his own with his uncle, informing him of the utterly tragic news of the death of his family and expressing his desire to move to Evermore and build a new life for himself with the last of his family that still remained. His uncle had been heartbroken, but enthusiastically welcomed Servius's desire to move to Evermore. He had insisted that Servius stay with him and his family and that he would help him get established in the new city. With all his family dead and his friends perished during the War, his uncle's incredible generosity meant the entire world to Servius, as he had absolutely no one else in all of Tamriel he could call upon. After humbly accepting his uncle's offer, Servius had made all the necessary arrangements and then set out on his journey, leaving his war-ravaged homeland behind forever.

It was a saddening thought, leaving behind the only life he had ever known, but the Dominion had thoroughly destroyed it and nothing could be done about it now; lingering on it would only bring him sadness. Instead, he chose to focus his thoughts on the new life ahead of him, what his uncle's family would be like, the new city he would be calling home, what kind of employment he might find, and the new people he would meet. It was an exciting and uplifting prospect, but it wasn't enough for him to completely put the events of the War behind him. Oftentimes he found his thoughts drifting back to his family. Sleep was the worst, when he had no control over the dreams that plagued him at night. Many was a time when he had woken from a particularly vivid dream about his wife and their little boy and had broken down in tears in that disorienting twilight zone between slumber and wakefulness before the rest of his faculties could return. He would curse his own weakness after he regained himself, letting their memories bring him to tears even four years after their deaths. But most of all, he cursed the murderous elves and their senseless cruelty. How he _loathed_ the elves!

Before his mind could wander any further than it already had, Servius's attention was drawn to a huge, brownish grey column of smoke rising into the sky between the mountainous peaks far off in the distance, several miles away to the north. That was curious, he thought. It looked to be several hours' march away, and the fact that he could discern it at all was evidence that it must have been a large fire. Unfortunately, Servius had seen such smoke columns before, during the Great War; they usually indicated that the Dominion had put an entire village to the torch. Whenever he and his unit of legionaries had passed by such sites, they were more often than not greeted with the sight of burned out husks of buildings, bodies strewn across the village's streets and fields of crops set ablaze.

The implications of the great plume of smoke greatly unsettled Servius. The origin of the smoke was directly on the path that he had intended to take through this section of the Reach. Was there a marauding army running rampant through the region, right between him and his destination? The possibility was alarming, to say the least. Servius was well aware that in the last year of the War, the native Reachmen had overthrown the Nordic government in Skyrim's section of the Reach and, together with the already largely autonomous section of the Reach in High Rock, had formed their own independent domain. Servius's impression was that the whole process had been a relatively bloodless affair with no real clashes between armies and involving the executions of only a few key members of the old Nordic regime. After that, the Reachmen had ruled their domain rather peacefully and had even begun the process of obtaining formal recognition from the Empire. So why, now, was there what looked like an entire town or village being destroyed? He had banked on the region being relatively peaceful, enough for him to be able to make a safe journey through it, as traversing the Reach was the most direct route to Evermore. But if there was the makings of a small war brewing in the Reach, then he would have to backtrack and find another route to Evermore, which would add weeks to his journey.

Servius frowned. He did _not_ like the implications of that column of smoke at all. But it was just as likely that the column of smoke meant something else entirely, and that he was simply being paranoid by assuming an invading army. As he finished off his meal, he weighed his options. On the one hand, he could resume his journey as originally intended, which would take him close to the source of all that smoke and investigate its true cause, but this ran the risk of running into a possible invading army. On the other hand, he could play it safe and leave the Reach, where he would then find a different route to Evermore, but this would cost him time and supplies. He knew that he had not yet passed the point of no return since the last village along the way he had stopped at, so he had more than enough food and supplies left to return the way he came from. Both options were equally feasible.

Before he could ruminate further on which course of action to take next, Servius was again distracted by something new. Emerging from a cluster of forest off in the distance to the northwest, on the other side of the lake and the small river that led from it was what appeared to be a woman in obvious distress. She was sprinting away from the forest with all the speed she could muster.

Despite the relatively small size of the river, it was still too large to be able to wade across, and the only crossing Servius could see was a little ways up from where the river flowed out of the lake, where several large rocks jutted up above the water. The panicked woman, realizing this, made her way over to the crossing, where she seemed to hesitate, as if deciding whether or not to cross and risk losing her footing and falling into the river. Cautiously, she glanced over her shoulders to the trees she came from, as if expecting something else to emerge and chase after her.

Surely enough, Servius saw a large, bearded man outfitted with crude leather armour and wielding the largest battleaxe he had ever seen emerge from the stand of trees and come barreling down the slope that led to the river. Catching sight of her pursuer seemed to make up the terrified woman's mind for her as she leapt onto the jutting stones traversing the river, carefully hopping from one to another, no easy feat given the long skirt and hefty-looking satchel he saw her wearing. The dangerously armed and frenzied man easily stood a good head and shoulders taller than the apparently unarmed woman, and watching him give chase to her, it looked to Servius like he had finally come across the brigandry he had been wary of since entering the Reach.

"_Kom heðra, þú seið-kona svikall!_" the bandit bellowed in Nordic as he chased after the woman. Servius, not being able to speak Nordic, had no idea what was screamed at the top of his lungs, but it was clear to him that he couldn't just sit there and do nothing. Allowing the Nord to murder a defenceless woman when he could prevent that would be absolutely unconscionable, to say nothing of the possibility that the bandit might turn on him once he finished with the woman.

Hopping off his rock, Servius snatched up his bow and pulled an arrow from his quiver and nocked it. The fleeing woman had by now crossed the river and, having caught sight of Servius, was now racing towards him.

"_Gwórethan!_" she shrieked at him in a language that he didn't recognize, her voice shaking from sheer panic. "_Gwórethan mi! Má harwéra í ti!_"

The Nordic bandit was now hopping across the rocks, as the woman had just done, but moving noticeably slower, perhaps due to the need to balance the weight of his enormous axe. This gave Servius the perfect opportunity. Adrenalin flooded through his body, as it did whenever he was about to take a life. A chill swept through him, feeling as if ice water had been poured into his veins and arteries, and he suddenly seemed significantly more aware of everything around. He could feel the cool breeze that swept across his face and flicked back stray strands of hair, the scent of pine trees filled his nostrils, and his ears rung with the pounding of blood through the arteries that ran through them. He was acutely aware of the creaking of the wood of his bow as he pulled on the string and drew it back to his ear, looking down the shaft of the arrow and taking careful aim at his target. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the fleeing woman startle and run out of his field of vision. Adjusting his aim, he made the necessary calculations to compensate for the wind, the distance, and the bandit's speed as he traversed the river. A dull burn was beginning to set in in the muscles in his back as they fatigued from maintaining his pose and holding the bow drawn as he waited for the axe-wielding man.

Servius inhaled deeply and then held it as he watched the brigand about to make the last jump onto the bank of the river. He released the arrow just before the Nord pushed off and watched as it sailed gracefully through the air to its target, striking the man just as he landed on the river bank, punching through his leather armour and piercing him between his ribs. With a pained grunt, the Nord collapsed. He noticed footsteps beside him, no doubt from the fleeing woman, but paid them little mind as he pulled another arrow from his quiver, nocked it, and drew it back, taking aim once more at the man now laying in a crumpled heap on the ground.

Servius figured a single arrow wouldn't be enough to put the beast of a man down, and he was proven right as the man slowly pulled himself up from the ground and fixed him with a look of pure hatred. Once the man was fully upright, he hefted his battleaxe and bellowed in rage as he began to charge at Servius, the arrow still sticking out of his side. Servius was unconcerned, however, as the man was still a safe distance away and made himself a woefully easy target, the way he was charging straight at him. With cool, battle-hardened composure, the Imperial took careful aim and let the second arrow fly, this time striking the charging marauder in his upper left chest. The Nord collapsed once more, falling forward mid-stride and sliding several feet on the rocky ground from his momentum. Servius noted with annoyance the snap of the last arrow he shot as the Nord collapsed upon it.

Taking a moment to relax the muscles in his arms and back and to let his nerves settle, Servius turned to regard the woman at his side, and found that he had never seen a woman with such a peculiar mix of characteristics. She was very tall, like most Nordic women, about the same height as him, if not an inch taller (but then, he wasn't very tall either, even by the standards of his own people), but thin and with a slender build that most Nordic women he'd seen had lacked. She looked young too, perhaps in her early or mid twenties, so not much younger than him (he was twenty-eight years old). Her untied hair was a dark brown and seemed to fall halfway down her back, and her skin tone was a swarthy olive hue, almost like an Imperial, though she clearly wasn't one. Her facial features were very sharp and angular, he noticed, almost elven, though her rounded ears confirmed her as human. She had large, beautifully green eyes, high, pronounced cheekbones, a slender jaw with a delicate chin, a thin, straight nose and thin lips. The most distinctive feature Servius noted, though, was the elaborate tattoo that reached out from the middle of her forehead in intricate, graceful knots, arched down her temples and curved around under her eyes, reaching halfway on either side to her nose before stopping. She was very beautiful, he decided, but in an exotic sense whereby he appreciated her appearance for its uniqueness just as much as for its inherent beauty.

Currently, her attention was equally split between him and the dead bandit, her gaze darting back and forth between the two with a mixture of shock, confusion, and worry dancing behind her eyes. Deciding he'd been staring at her long enough, Servius turned and strode over to the dead Nord, intent on retrieving the one intact arrow and the head of the broken one. As he knelt down next to the dead man, a dagger in hand just in case the bandit still had a bit of life in him, he realized that, between her exotic look and the strange language she spoke, she must be one of the Reachmen. Or a Reachwoman, rather.

That was interesting, he thought as he knelt and rolled the Nord over onto his back; he had never seen or met any natives of the Reach before. Focusing his attention back to the Nord, he found that the man's glassy-eyed, empty stare indicated that he was now dead. _Good_, he thought as he began digging out the arrows from the dead brigand's flesh and armour. Once he finished with that, he checked the man over for his coin purse and lifted that once he found it.

Looking back at the woman, he noticed she was now staring at the column of smoke rising to the north, her hand over her mouth, and her eyes wide and shimmering as if she might break down into tears any moment. Her eyes darted back to Servius as soon as he stood up and began walking back over to her.

"_Bráthu!_" she said to him as he approached, her voice still trembling. "_Bráthu co imeth!_" He hadn't the faintest idea what she was saying.

"Do you speak Cyrodiilic at all?" asked Servius. The only answer the woman offered was a blank, uncomprehending stare.

"_Cyrodiilic?_" he asked again, emphasising the word, to which the woman responded with a shake of her head. Servius let out a sigh; communicating with her would be difficult if neither spoke or understood the other's language.

"My name is Servius Vulso," he said. Placing a hand over his chest to indicate himself, he repeated, "_Servius_." He then pointed to the woman as a means of conveying his question.

She seemed to understand what he meant and mimicked him by placing her hand over her own chest. "_Ardhwína,_" she said.

"Ard…" Servius began, but stumbled on the unfamiliar sound in her name, his brows knitting into a frown. "Ardhwína?" he tried again, and she nodded once, a small and uncertain smile beginning to form on her face.

As Servius sat down next to his pack that was still resting on the ground against the large rock, he gestured for Ardhwína to do the same. Hesitantly, she removed her satchel and sat down next to him and fixed him with a curious stare. Servius reached inside his pack for one of his water skins and passed it off to her, figuring she must be desperately thirsty after running for her very life from the marauding Nordic brigand for who knows how long. His intuitions were proven correct when Ardhwína eagerly accepted the proffered skin, unstoppered it, and drank greedily from it for several long moments.

As she drank, Servius's gaze drifted back to the giant column of smoke to the north. He recalled that Ardhwína and the pursuing bandit had come from that general direction and wondered if the dead Nord had anything to do with the smoke. Deciding it would be best to err on the side of caution, he thought it best to assume that the huge plume of smoke had a violent cause and that it would be better to try and find an alternate path around it. He reached into his pack once more and removed his map of Skyrim from inside, unfolding it and spreading it out on the ground before him. Ardhwína, finished with the water skin and having set it aside, looked over to see Servius hunched over the map.

"P_élóch a hesi ti en shenthan?_"

Servius looked up and blinked at her in confusion. What was she saying? Come to think of it, why was she still here? Shouldn't she be going back to her home? Surely it couldn't be far from here. Hopefully it wasn't the source of that column of smoke, though he realized with a sinking feeling of dread that it was a very distinct possibility..

"Where's your home?" Servius asked her, even though he knew she wouldn't understand his words. Now it was her turn to look confused.

Reaching into his pack again, Servius withdrew another map, this one of Cyrodiil. He unfolded it and placed it beneath the map of Skyrim he had pulled out, aligning the borders depicted on the two different maps so that they depicted the two provinces positions relative to each other in Tamriel.

"_Home_," he repeated with emphasis. Then, placing one hand over his chest again, he pointed with his other hand to the city of Anvil on the map of Cyrodiil. "_My_ home." Ardhwína watched interestedly as he then traced a path with his finger from Anvil, up through Colovia, across the Jerall Mountains, and into the Reach from its southeastern borders before tapping twice on the position on the map that indicated their current location.

"_Your_ home?" Servius asked as he pointed to Ardhwína. Looking again as if she was about to burst into tears, she hung her head and pointed to the column of smoke to the northwest.

Servius's heart fell at her answer. He could relate all too well to what it was like to lose your home, to have your entire life and everything you knew destroyed by war. Feeling compelled to console her and show her that he understood what she was going through, Servius reached out and wrapped one arm around Ardhwína's shoulders, pulling her in for an embrace, though he knew the gesture would do little to comfort her. At first, Ardhwína looked over to him in surprise, as if she had truly not expected such a gesture from him, but eventually just let herself be consoled.

"P_élóch a hesi ti en shenthan?_" she repeated her earlier question after a minute or so. She retraced the path of his journey that he had showed her on the map with her finger up to the their current location, then made a sweeping, open-handed gesture across the map toward High Rock while sending an inquisitive look his way. Understanding her question, Servius traced the route he had intended to take on the map, running his finger through the Reach, along the Karth river to Markarth, and then the rest of the way through the Reach into High Rock. Though judging from the apparently violent destruction of Ardhwína's village, he doubted that that remained a valid trajectory.

Looking up, he saw Ardhwína vehemently shaking her head. She then traced out an alternate route on the map that would take him through the southern portion of the Reack and skirting Skyrim's border with Hammerfell before turning north again west of Markarth, bypassing the entire region of the Reach that his originally planned route passed through. Servius stared dumbly at the route she had traced. The map didn't show any roads or paths that ran along the path that Ardhwína traced with her finger. There was no chance he would be able to navigate that route without getting hopelessly lost in the twisted, labyrinthine terrain of the Reach.

Reaching into his pack, Servius produced a small piece of charcoal, vaguely traced in the air without marking the map the path she had indicated, and then handed it to her. Ardhwína understood his request and began carefully examining the map and tracing the precise route she had in mind. Servius watched as she navigated subtle nuances of topography on the map with the charcoal that he would never have imagined would affect his journey, and it became clear to him that she had an impressively intimate knowledge of the country through which he was travelling.

An idea suddenly occurred to Servius: why not have Ardhwína accompany him as his guide? With her at his side, the chance of getting lost along the way would be minimal. He would have an extra mouth to feed, but the route she traced through the Reach was significantly shorter than circumnavigating the entire region altogether, which was his previous plan, and he would arrive at Evermore much sooner. In return, he would be able to protect her from the various dangers that faced lone travellers on foot, since she looked woefully unable to protect herself on her own. And if her entire home had just been razed to the ground, it would save her from aimlessly wandering until bandits or wolves got to her. The more he thought about it, the better he thought it would be for both of them.

Once Ardhwína finished tracing her route on the map, she handed the charcoal back to Servius, which he then replaced in his pack, along with the map of Cyrodiil. He studied the route she traced on the map of Skyrim for a few moments longer before he folded that map up as well and tucked it away inside his pack. Standing up, he shouldered his pack and gathered his weapons before turning to look back to Ardhwína. She remained sitting on the ground and looked hopelessly lost and alone.

Once again, Servius felt a powerful ache in his heart as he regarded Ardhwína with sympathy. He had been in exactly the same position as her not evena year ago, feeling utterly lost and helpless. If it hadn't been for his uncle and his generous offer of support, Servius didn't know how he would have coped during those initial couple months after the war. He didn't know if Ardhwína had someone she could call upon for support like that, but he wanted to help her regardless.

He reached down and offered Ardhwína his hand. Once more, she had a look of surprise on her face as she registered the gesture, as if she honestly hadn't expected him to show her any kindness, but eventually she took his hand and allowed him to help her to her feet.

"Come with me," Servius implored with a smile as he took a step towards the road and gestured for her to follow. Again, she seemed hesitant. She bit her bottom lip and shifted her gaze around anxiously, as if expecting the rocks and trees around her to provide her with an answer to the question she was debating. After several long moments of consideration, she stooped to retrieve her satchel and tentatively took a few steps to stand next to Servius.

His smile grew even wider after she accepted his invitation, and together they set out for the road. Servius wasn't sure what would happen with her once they completed their journey and reached Evermore, but he would figure that out along the way. For now, he was excited to finally have some company on his journey, even if they couldn't understand each other's language; after so long in the Legions, he had become accustomed to travelling in the company of others and the loneliness of the past weeks had been taking an unexpected toll on him. Though now that Ardhwína was coming along with him, Servius was, for once, looking forward to the next phase of his journey.

* * *

><p><strong>Translations:<strong>

**"Kom heðra, þú seið-kona svikall!" [Come here, you treacherous witch!]**

**"Gwórethan (mi)!" [Help (me)!]**

**"Má harwéra í ti!" [Please! (Lit. If it pleases you)]**

**"Bráthu!" [Thank you!]**

**"Bráthu co imeth!" [Thank you so much!]**

**"Pélóch a hesi ti en shenthan?" [Where are you travelling to?]**

**Regarding unfamiliar characters: **ð** (Eth, capital Ð) represents a voiced dental fricative sound (the _th_ in English "this" or "the") while **þ** (Thorn, capital Þ) represents a voiceless dental fricative sound (the _th_ in English "think" or "thin").**

**A note regarding languages: The language that I've used to represent the language of the Nords in-game is Old Norse. As my knowledge of this language consists only of what I manage to look up on the intertubes, I would appreciate it immensely if anyone with a greater understanding of Old Norse notifies me of any errors I make and points out corrections. Secondly, the language I'm using to represent the language of the Reachmen is a constructed language called Gal**á**thach, and was created to hypothetically represent what Gaulish, an ancient and unfortunately extinct continental Celtic language, might have resembled if it survived into modern times (Gaulish was spoken in ancient Gaul, what is now roughly modern France, first appearing some 2 600 years ago and going extinct about 1 500 years ago due to being supplanted by Vulgar Latin from the Roman Republic and later Empire, and the languages of various invading Germanic tribes). The homepage for the Gal**á**thach conlang is www . moderngaulish . com (spaces removed, of course). I chose it because the names of various characters and places in the Reach in Skyrim seemed Celtic to me, but at the same time I didn't want to pick a surviving Celtic language because then any native speakers of that language would have no problem understanding the dialogue, and that takes away from the feeling of foreign-ness that I want to imply when writing from certain characters' viewpoints. Also, it's hard finding good online dictionaries and sites that teach grammatical rules for the surviving Celtic languages. Thirdly, when writing from Ardhwína's perspective in future chapters, I'll be using Latin to represent the Cyrodiilic language that Servius speaks.**

**On an unrelated point, I wrote this chapter in the span of about a week, which is ridiculously fast for me, when I really should have been doing more important things. Like studying for my Dental Aptitude Test a month and a half away, which is only held twice a frickin' year (because the CDA are a bunch of assholes...). Anyway, the point is, I don't expect speedy updates, partly because this school year will be insanely busy for me and I (should) only write when I have free time (and inspiration), and partly because I always end up writing more than I intend. (I can't stop adding details! This chapter was originally supposed to be half to two thirds as big as it is currently.)**

**I'm rambling again. So, if you enjoyed this chapter, please send me a review! I really appreciate feedback and your reviews mean a lot to me. Also, they keep my inspiration going (*hint hint, nudge nudge*) Thanks a lot, and have a wonderful day!**

**-Valerianus**


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